AI recruiting priorities

**Spendius** · 11-17-2006, 14:34

Usually, in the TW series, the AI tried to recruit quite balanced armies, with even shares of infantry, cav, missile. It is nice that AI tries to build realistic armies and not just spams overpowerd units like cavalry in RTW.
However, I'm still in my first campaign, around 1270, and I find that the AI sometimes has very incoherent way of choosing his troops. The egyptian sent a captain wandering around Jerusalem with 1 militia spearmen, and about 10 catapults, which I defeated easily with a few knights. He has other armies around Gaza, he could have balanced them more !
Then yesterday the german besieges and attacks Antwerp. I had only militia troops, about 5 crossbowmen, 2 spears and 3 fauchards. He attacks with 5 militia crossbowmen, and about 15 catapults/trebuchets/ballistae/bombards. Okay, it's a weak army, but it could work for a siege.
AI uses artillery to destroy the towers near the gate they are facing, but not the wall. Then he decides to do the same with my other gate, and starts moving all his troops under my walls and crossbowmen, loosing trebuchets to flaming arrows. That was stupid. he still manages to destroy the other gate's towers, and a few walls. Then, he comes inside for melee with crossbowmen, and bloody TREBUCHET CREWS ! I almost lost the battle, but this combination of stupid army setup and stupid behaviour kinds of spoils the fun. The battlefield AI can't do any good with a stupid army, and recruiting a powerful army is useless if the BF AI just stands there under arrows and rocks, but the combination is too much !
Needless to say, auto-resolve makes me loose the battle big time.
I would hate having to resort to unbalanced, broken auto-resolve as a workaround for an AI retarded on 2 levels.

PS: auto resolve should be fixed anyways. I use it to avoid loosing time in easy battles, but then I should loose MORE troops than when I use my brains on the battlefield. It is not the case, especially on very uneven assaults.

**Quillan** · 11-17-2006, 17:06

My experience is that the AI does make balanced armies, in everything except artillery. It spams artillery for some reason. I fought a Venetian army last night with 8 trebuchets, 2 catapults and 1 ballista. The remainder were pavise crossbow militia, italian spear milita and dismounted men-at-arms.

**magnum** · 11-17-2006, 17:57

AI seems to have a love of ranged units in general, and siege units specifically. I haven't encountered any armies a badly built as a few mentioned here, but the AI does need to tone it down a little.

**Slaists** · 11-17-2006, 18:00

Yes, I have encountered quite a few "artillery armies" in my English campaign as well... It seems, this is something that got inherited from RTW - AI would build artillery heavy armies there as well...

**KARTLOS** · 11-17-2006, 19:09

i think the thing with egypt and their seige engine armies seems to bew a specific bug. in two seperate campaigns, as the englsih and the sicilians i have arrived in egypt on my way to jeruselem, to find v poorly defended cities and field armies comprising mostly seige weapons!

**Spino** · 11-17-2006, 21:22

Currently playing a campaign as the English (H/VH) and I have yet to notice any armies loaded with too many siege engines.

I will say that the Peasant problem from MTW is back! To be honest it's not nearly as bad as it was in vanilla MTW but I still see the AI using them when it clearly shouldn't. There's no excuse for the AI to be using Peasants when more effective units like Town and Spear militias are available. I sincerely hope modders do away with the option to build Peasants altogether.

**Sir Robin** · 11-17-2006, 22:40

There seems to be a random factor thrown in to give the AI armies a little more variety. Unfortunately it causes some artillery or peasant armies to appear. I have not run into anything this bad but its probably just a matter of time.

I just hope the modders will find ways to remove the option to build peasants completely. Whether historically accurate or not its awfully boring to face on the battlefield.

**BeeSting** · 11-17-2006, 22:43

I am fighting the Byzantines as Venetians and I’ve been running into armies after armies with 4 to 5 siege engines each.

**Stolpmeister** · 11-17-2006, 23:46

AI Milan seems to be fond of building large armies consisting of hordes of pavise crossbow militia... I've seen several armies of about 75%+ crossbows. It seems more like the norm than a random exception. They're a good unit, but not THAT good.

**BeeSting** · 11-18-2006, 00:16

Originally Posted by Stolpmeister

AI Milan seems to be fond of building large armies consisting of hordes of pavise crossbow militia... I've seen several armies of about 75%+ crossbows. It seems more like the norm than a random exception. They're a good unit, but not THAT good.

That's still better than fighting an army with 50% siege engines on a battlefield.